Hawking says there are no gods

[kellyb]

Do you want any more?
Don’t you say me that an “experimental proof” is also mathematics. Please.

I do see your point, but the term "experimental proof" is mostly limited to physics, the "hardest" of the scientific disciplines, and also the most math-based one.

 

[David Mo]

Have you forgotten the article that this thread is about?

This is not an article of science, but popular science and philosophy of science. In fact Hawking uses to quote so many philosophers as scientists. His opinions are not availed by a scientific methodology. Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and many others made the same.

 

[David Mo]

I do see your point, but the term "experimental proof" is mostly limited to physics, the "hardest" of the scientific disciplines, and also the most math-based one.

No it is not true. I have seen some articles on evolution and astronomy. In ten minutes.

 

[Darat]

This is not an article of science, but popular science and philosophy of science. In fact Hawking uses to quote so many philosophers as scientists. His opinions are not availed by a scientific methodology. Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and many others made the same.

It is an article about his scientific work.

 

[Belz...]

There they are!!! Those qualia words, who only have meaning in your mind, because they make sense.
Does it occur to you, that you prove my point by retreating down to how reality makes sense to you!
And that reality might make sense differently for another human.

I see you made quite the effort to ignore my points.

Do you want to try again to address the actual content, or do you plan to stick on the container, instead?

Don't waste my time with nonsense about qualia or meaning. Address what I actually said about what we can know about reality.

Otherwise concede that you don't understand what we're discussing.

 

[kellyb]

No it is not true. I have seen some articles on evolution and astronomy. In ten minutes.

Astronomy is astrophysics (along with astrometry and celestial mechanics.)

I'd be interested to see an evolution one.

 

[kellyb]

Over the past 5 years, fewer than 250 results:

It's very unconventional to use the word "proof" in biology. They usually say "evidence" instead.

 

[Chanakya]

I think what you're calling "god ideas" is what I'd call "philosophical non-theistic religions".

I agree with you that the classic christian god can be out-right rejected and actively disbelieved in (hard atheism) a lot more easily than the non-theistic religions, which seem to propose unfalsifiable theories about the nature of reality.

I'm agnostic in every sense of the word, right down to its Ancient Greek roots, about those religions. I don't think I'd call myself a "soft atheist" there, tho, because there's no "theos" presumed or claimed to exist in the religion to fully reject, be somewhat skeptical about, or actively believe in.

But at the end of the day, I'm with Descartes on the whole "I think, therefore I am" thing, about how all we can really be sure of 100% is that we exist. I think it's more "I feel, therefore I am", though. Thinking is optional.

I'm sorry, I seem to have missed some posts in this fast-moving thread last time I'd logged in here, this one included.

What you say here -- "I agree with you that the classic christian god can be out-right rejected and actively disbelieved in (hard atheism) a lot more easily than the non-theistic religions, which seem to propose unfalsifiable theories about the nature of reality" -- sums up my position exactly.

It's a bit like the difference between 'innocent' and 'not guilty'. There are some times when "innocent" actually bears out; but often, that is not the case, and nevertheless "not guilty" is still good enough, and for practical purposes usually does not make a difference.

Is that difference mere pedantry? It could be no more than that, depending on the situation, as well as the individual making this assessment and their capacity and inclination for nuance; but on the other hand, it can very well be perfectly relevant, again depending on the situation, as well as the individual making the assessment.



I take your point -- that you made in a separate post addressed to me, and which I'm not quoting separately here -- that while you used to find this distinction relevant earlier, you no longer do that. I can understand that, and resept that, absolutely. I can even understand someone never ever having found this distinction relevant at all. But at the end of the day, it's subjective. (Not in an everything-is-subjective vein, but actually subjective, if you get my drift.)

It's a bit like asking, are the different denominations within Christianity, or within Islam, or within Buddhism, relevant? For that matter, is even the distinction between the different major religions themselves relevant? One way would be to simply class it all as "Woo", and consider the distinctions between RCC and JW, or between Christianity and Islam, as pedantic. That's perfectly valid, at the personal level. And yet it isn't pedantry, if these religions are something you wish to engage with. (And the large numbers of theists is an argument for this engagement, an argument that increases the likelihood of this engagement -- without of course making that engagement in any way necessary.)

To turn this example on its head, and look at it from the other end: From the POV of the diehard RCC, are distinctions between other denominations of Christianity, or other relgions, or even other kinds of positions like atheism, at all relevant. One POV -- perfectly relevant, subjectively speaking -- would be to relegate all of these people into one single category, namely, 'hellbound heathens', and simply leave it at that. Sure, that's one way to go. But if this RCC wishes to engage with other points of view (and that wish is entirely optional) then it makes sense to see these nuances, in the interests of effective engagement.



I'm going to respond to two more things I saw you saying to me. (I'll do that without actually referencing your actual post in quotes, if you don't mind, as I'm rushed.)

The first relates to your saying that no matter how many people believe in bigfoot, it is never necessary to enage in detail with that question. I'd like to point out to you that that is an argument for whether you'll engage with them at all or not. What I'd said, about precision following from large numbers, all that, that was predicated on the assumption that there will be the attempt at effective engagement.

Sure, at the personal level, you're free not to enage with this at all. But if you do -- and if you wish to do this effectlvely, properly -- then I surely, for the space of your investigation and "engagement", and until you've clearly shown your results, hard-atheism style, you can no more than be soft-a-bigfootist? Sure, after you've shown these claims to be bogus, then hard-a-bigfootism is a valid stance.



I noticed you pointing out to Nonpareil his/her mistake in imagining my argument was an appeal to popularity fallacy. Thank you. But you also suggested that it might be a moving-goalposts fallacy. I don't see how that works. Would you like to explain?

 

[Chanakya]

I am starting to have no idea of what is soft and hard atheism. It seems to me that everybody uses the word as he likes. Sagan himself is a soft or a hard atheist depending of who is talking.

To say that soft atheism is to be open to future evidences is ridiculous. Every rational man thinks so. Only dogmatic people don’t do so. But this elemental caution is not contrary to believe that God doesn’t exist with certainty. Even that certainty doesn’t mean absolute certainty.

I think that “soft atheism” is used as synonym of an atheist that doesn’t make uncomfortable to believers. A guy who isn't aggressive, who doesn't criticize too much, who doesn't round up the other way around, who isn't indignant about anything... And above all, don't let he say that believing in God is irrational.

Conclusion: A pure evaluative word.

No, David Mo, that is not what it is. This is pretty basic, actually.

Is God guilty of existence? If you say he's "innocent" of existence, then that's hard atheism. If you say he's "not guilty" -- which is short form for "he's not been proven guilty" -- then that's soft atheism.

It is possible, at times, to actually proncounce innocence (in as much as anything can be "proved" at all, scientifically or otherwise -- that inherent absence of cent percent certitude is not what I'm referring to). At such times hard atheism is justified.

Other times, the best we can say is "not proved guilty". And that's good enough too, for all practical purposes.

A soft atheist can be perfectly aggressive and a righ *******, and a hard atheist can be extremely courteous and considerate of opposing views. That has nothing to do with this.

(At least, there's no necessity for this correlation. Might there actually be a correlation between these unrelated categories -- that is, between 'soft' and 'nice' on the one hand, and 'hard' and 'abrasive' on the other? That's like asking, are brown-haired people generally taller than redheads? You can't answer that without actual research. I'm not aware of any research that has actually looked at this question, as far as "soft" and "nice".)

 

[JoeMorgue]

Wow it's a tag-team Gish Gallop at this point.

 

[Steve]

No, David Mo, that is not what it is. This is pretty basic, actually.

Is God guilty of existence? If you say he's "innocent" of existence, then that's hard atheism. If you say he's "not guilty" -- which is short form for "he's not been proven guilty" -- then that's soft atheism.It is possible, at times, to actually proncounce innocence (in as much as anything can be "proved" at all, scientifically or otherwise -- that inherent absence of cent percent certitude is not what I'm referring to). At such times hard atheism is justified.

Other times, the best we can say is "not proved guilty". And that's good enough too, for all practical purposes.

A soft atheist can be perfectly aggressive and a righ *******, and a hard atheist can be extremely courteous and considerate of opposing views. That has nothing to do with this.

(At least, there's no necessity for this correlation. Might there actually be a correlation between these unrelated categories -- that is, between 'soft' and 'nice' on the one hand, and 'hard' and 'abrasive' on the other? That's like asking, are brown-haired people generally taller than redheads? You can't answer that without actual research. I'm not aware of any research that has actually looked at this question, as far as "soft" and "nice".)

No. This is what is "basic" - An atheist will not say any of these things. To an atheist there is no god to attribute innocence or guilt to.

 

[Chanakya]

Wow it's a tag-team Gish Gallop at this point.

 

[Chanakya]

No. This is what is "basic" - An atheist will not say any of these things. To an atheist there is no god to attribute innocence or guilt to.

You're wrong. Objectively wrong.

There are plenty of atheists who do say these things.

Are they mistaken in thinking and saying these things? That is a separate question.

To weigh in on that question, you'll have to do more that present your unsupported ipse dixt opinion.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Chanakya you seem unable to grasp that there is a difference between "Disagreeing with me" and "You don't understand me."

Yes we all heard your defenses of your special pleading. We don't not understand them, we just don't agree that they are valid and mean what you are doing is not special pleading.

"But I already explained to you why you are wrong" isn't an argument.

Again the longer this discussion goes on, the more hairs that get split, the more special pleadings that get pleaded, the more argumentative rules and nuance get invoked the more my point is proved.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

I see you made quite the effort to ignore my points.

Do you want to try again to address the actual content, or do you plan to stick on the container, instead?

Don't waste my time with nonsense about qualia or meaning. Address what I actually said about what we can know about reality.

Otherwise concede that you don't understand what we're discussing.

What we can actually say/know about reality as having existence independently of the mind, is that it has existence independently of the mind.
The rest are axioms, assumptions, suppositions and dogmas, all as beliefs we hold as foundational, self-evidently true and/or that they make sense.

Now relevant for the weak approach, namely methodological naturalism it doesn't follow that religion is wrong in any sense of being wrong. Religion as a metaphysical assumptions falls outside methodological naturalism.
That you believe reality is natural and as it appears in general, doesn't make it so.
That someone believes reality is from God and it is a form of idealism, doesn't make it so.
I don't care for neither position if it is used to declare other world-views wrong in a no-moral sense or any other sense of wrong.
I accept the former, but reject that it leads to other world-views being wrong in any sense of being wrong.

I further reject any version of real for everything/reality/the universe/the world. Real is always local within everything/reality/the universe/the world and context dependent.

As for knowledge itself, no one has ever refuted Agrippa's trilemma. The solution is to state your beliefs and accept that they function as a form of dogma. I do.
If I get you right, you treat knowledge as some people treat God. If knowledge is not what you believe, it is, it is a meaningless to you as it is meaningless to some, if there are no God.
You will then being talking about useful, practical, making sense, what works and what not. What you leave out is that they are to you. They are nothing in themselves. They only have value to somebody. They are all qualia as they only have meaning in your mind and you only know them because they are familiar to you.
It doesn't make sense to talk about what reality actually is, it only makes sense to talk about different beliefs and compare them based on what universally makes sense in a non-Authoritative sense.
I hold no Authority over you and nor in reverse, a sort of veil of ignorance for reality in toto.

 

[kellyb]

Sure, at the personal level, you're free not to enage with this at all. But if you do -- and if you wish to do this effectlvely, properly -- then I surely, for the space of your investigation and "engagement", and until you've clearly shown your results, hard-atheism style, you can no more than be soft-a-bigfootist? Sure, after you've shown these claims to be bogus, then hard-a-bigfootism is a valid stance.

Shown it (demonstrated it) to yourself to your own satisfaction, or shown it to a real bigfoot believer?

When encountering a new idea, or exploring something for the first time, I try to give the proponent a lot of benefit of the doubt, and give the idea a lot of room for a fighting chance, no matter how outlandish the idea might intuitively strike me as.

But I'm not going to fake being "purely agnostic" on a topic I've already explored in-depth (for example, bigfoot, and the various versions of the Christian god.)

I noticed you pointing out to Nonpareil his/her mistake in imagining my argument was an appeal to popularity fallacy. Thank you. But you also suggested that it might be a moving-goalposts fallacy. I don't see how that works. Would you like to explain?

The way the topic morphed from "gods" to "god ideas" seemed like you were wanting to disagree with Hawking, but you used semantic/linguistic re-tooling to do it, changing the definition of "gods" to be able to more validly disagree with Hawking. I don't think you did that out any malicious or dishonest impulse, btw. It just seemed like a sort of "moving the goalpost" kind of logical fallacy.

 

[Belz...]

What we can actually say/know about reality as having existence independently of the mind, is that it has existence independently of the mind.

So you are, in fact, agreeing with what I said.

The rest is irrelevant, because it doesn't change that fact.

It doesn't make sense to talk about what reality actually is, it only makes sense to talk about different beliefs and compare them based on what universally makes sense in a non-Authoritative sense.

No, it only makes sense to talk about how things behave.

 

[Nonpareil]

The end game is this, you can't trust verification, because of the psychology involved. You will continue to use ad hocs to explain away negatives.
If you use skepticism, you accept some negatives, because you don't take for given that a result must be positive.

And back to coherent, so if you take for granted that everything is coherent, you will explain any result of non-coherence as gibberish, where as I accept it, because just as I accept there is a limit to human mobility, there is a limit to reason, logic/truth/proof and evidence.
You start with that everything must be meaningful. I check if everything is meaningful and if it is not, I accept that.

More gibberish. And if your "argument" ultimately requires you to accept that parts of it are incoherent and meaningless, then it's not a very good argument.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

...


No, it only makes sense to talk about how things behave.

And how we ought to behave.

You can't solve is/ought simply by talking about how things behave. In fact you are saying to the effect of: We ought only to talk about how things behave and not how we ought to behave.
That is a contradiction BTW

That is where it always end. What is and how to behave. They are related, but not the same.

 

[JoeMorgue]

"Why" questions are just "What" questions badly worded.